New York to London: Office catering with David Cavalier

A few years ago I went to New York for two reasons; to visit a London-based client who had offices in New York and it also happened to be around the time of my birthday!

Whilst I was there I was fortunate enough to meet with a catering consultant (yes the ones we love to hate but are very much needed). We got chatting about how different the approach was to business and industry catering in Manhattan compared to London, so we walked a few blocks so I could see how things were done Manhattan style.

What was apparent was the fact that new office blocks did not have staff restaurants or cafeterias as such. In many cases there were commercial hot and cold food takeaways situated in the building foyers, with limited seating for the general public. The areas that I was shown were in fact large rows of food in chafing dishes with at least 20 to 30 choices, which in truth were very well executed but were priced very commercially. I asked why this approach had been chosen, to which the answer was cost – the building received revenues from the caterers and a rental fee.

The next thing I was interested in was what they did for hospitality. The answer from the catering consultant was that they had it delivered in. Apparently this was because it saved valuable rental space, worked out cheaper and the products were just as good if not better than having on-site catering.

If we look at the City of London a lot of new builds are going the same way. I have worked for Kudos for a few months now and we have Kudos Delivered; a company that delivers food to clients – from working lunches to hot and cold buffets. During my time here we have always been very busy with an ever-increasing number of clients; partly because we are only one of a handful of caterers that offer this service seven days per week. We are able to offer bespoke menus for each of our clients with the ability to scale up and down based on the client’s needs. We can also provide staff to serve the food if needed, although with all of our Kudos Delivered products we set up the food ready as if it was produced in-house on location.

During my days of working in the B&I (Business and Industry) sector, our clients would often ask the caterer for ways to cut costs; as it wasn’t perceived as a benefit for the employees anymore but as a very expensive burden. This was due to the valuable time it took day-to-day from the client every month to go through the various account lines, paying a management fee etc.

To summarise, I think the future is very bright for Kudos Delivered -a great cost-effective service tailored to your needs.